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        Country first, all other things next.

                                  — Sir Surendranath Banerjea.

        In 1895 Sir Surendranath Banerjea (1848-1925) was elected president of the Indian National Congress in its session held at Poona.

        He tells us in his well-known Autobiography 'A nation in the Making' that as soon as the announcement was made in October 1895, the first and foremost task he had to do at that time was to prepare the presidential speech and that he found it to be a herculean task. He worked very hard every day for nearly six weeks. He has recorded that he used to check the results of his labour by turning the manuscript in his mind even while he walked about his house, correcting the errors and polishing his style.

        It is now a fact of history that when the D-day came, Surendranath Banerjea delivered a very memorable oration which lasted for four hours. He concluded his address in the following inspiring words: We cannot afford to have a schism in our camp. Already they tell us that it is a Hindu Congress, although the presence of our Mohammedan friends completely contradicts the statement. Let it not be said that this is the congress of one social party rather than that of another. It is the Congress of United India, Hindus and Mohammedans, Christians, Parsis and Sikhs, of those who would reform their social customs and those who would not. Here we stand upon a common platform here we have all agreed to bury our social and religious differences.

        He was able to move and galvanize the audience and the entire audience enthusiastically stood up in a tumult of appreciative applause.

Dr Sachidananda Sinha (1871-1950) who had the good fortune of hearing Surendranath Banerjea speaking on many public platforms for nearly 40 years paid this tribute to him: For over 40 years Sir Surendranath Banerjea's supremacy as the most eloquent Indian orator in English remained unchallenged. All his public orations were marked by dignity, elevation, lucid exposition of complicated facts, sustained and fiery declamations, impatient exhortations, the power to touch the emotions making the hearers laugh and weep as the occasion may demand rallying battle-cries, and the thunderbolt of invective and not merely meek-spirited, dull, prosy sermons. All his contemporaries praised his energy and ideas and his intellectual and moral powers.         Surendranath Banerjea was born on 10 November, 1848. His father was a doctor who had studied western medicine in the first Calcutta Medical College. He tells us in his autobiography that at his home Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Culture strove together for mastery.         Surendranath Banerjea's father saw to it that his son was educated on Western lines. He matriculated at the Calcutta University in 1863. After he obtained his B.A. degree from Doveton College, Calcutta University in 1868, Surendranath Banerjea went to England to take the Indian Civil Service (ICS) Examination. He went to England along with Romesh Chandra Dutt and Bihari Lal Gupta. In his autobiography Surendranath Banerjea recalls with great feeling his journey to England from Calcutta: We were all young, in our teens, and the visit to England was a more serious affair than it is now.

Sir Surendranath Banerjea (1848-1925), awakener of Indian political consciousness.

        It not only meant absence from home and those near and dear to me for a number of years but there was a grim prospect of social ostracism, which for all practical purposes has now happily passed away. We three had to make our arrangements in secret, as if we were engaged in some nefarious plot of which the world should know nothing.

        Surendranath Banerjea and his two friends Romesh Chandra Dutt and Bihari Lal Gupta passed the Open Competition of 1869 and proceeded to a probationary period in the University of London. All the three of them passed the ICS Final Examination of 1871 and returned to Calcutta in September 1871. Surendranath Banerjea was posted to Sylhet, as Assistant Magistrate and Collector in November 1871. After a brief career under an English District Officer, whom he found unsympathetic he fell into trouble over the trial of a case and was reported to the High Court and the British Government. Based on that report he was dismissed from service on the framed up charge of dereliction of duty. Surendranath Banerjea then proceeded to England to present his appeal to the Secretary of State for India against the orders of dismissal issued by the Government of India. His appeal was dismissed by the Secretary of State. This was a heavy blow and he writes in his autobiography: 'I suffered as an Indian, a member of a community that lay disorganized, that had no public opinion and no voice in the Counsels of their Government.' It was the bedrock of this nationalistic conviction that influenced his subsequent political career in India.

        He returned to India in June 1875 and became a Professor of English in one of the colleges in Calcutta. He gradually rose in the educational world of Calcutta, attaining great influence among the students to whom he lectured upon such subjects as Indian unity, the study of history, the life of Mazzini and the life of Chaitanya. He had resolved to stir them out of their indifference to politics while protecting them from extreme fanatical views. And with this object in view he played a key role in organizing the Students' Association in Calcutta.

        He also founded Indian Association on 26 July, 1876 at Calcutta which was intended to be the centre of an all-India political movement. Surendranath Banerjea defined its ideals as: a) the creation of a strong body of public opinion in the country; b) the unification of Indian races upon the basis of common political interests; c) the promotion of friendly feelings between Hindus and Muslims and d) the inclusion of the masses in public movements.

        When the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was passed by Lord Lytton's Government, Surendranath Banerjea opposed it tooth and nail. By 1883 he had become Editor and Proprietor of the 'Bengalee' which he converted from an insignificant weekly into a successful daily newspaper. During the time of Ilbert Bill agitation, he was imprisoned for two months for contempt of court. He was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council in 1893 and continued as a Member till 1901.

        In the meantime, the Indian National Congress founded in 1885 had already recognized Surendranath Banerjea as one of its leading members and appointed him to its deputation to England in 1890. On his return from England, he presided over the Poona session of the Congress in December 1895. He also presided over the Ahmedabad Session of the Congress in 1902. He reached the climax of his political career during the days of Swadeshi Movement and Partition of Bengal in 1905.

        Surendranath Banerjea opposed the partition of Bengal and appealed to the Government of India in these words: 'My countrymen are suffering, and in their name and upon their behalf I urge you to do all in your power to bring about a modification of the partition of Bengal. I am sure my appeal will not fall upon heedless ears but will go forth from this meeting accompanied by a volume of sympathy which will have the effect of redressing our grievance and restoring many millions of my countrymen to contentment'.

        With the publication of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals on 20 August, 1917, there was a permanent split between the Moderates and the Extremists. All the Moderates left the Congress and the Extremists took over. In the Viceroy's Legislative Council, Surendranath Banerjea as leader of the Moderates moved a resolution approving generally of the new proposals contained in the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. He was knighted by the British Government on 1 January, 1921 and became a Minister in the Reformed Provincial Executive Council accepting the portfolio of Local Self Government and the Medical Department. On retiring from this Ministerial office in 1923, he finished his famous autobiography called 'A Nation in the Making'. He died on 6 August, 1925.

        Surendranath Banerjea, like many other great Indian statesmen of his time, sincerely believed that the ultimate power of the outstanding orator came from his moral and emotional character. He identified it with ardent patriotism, the moral emotion of love for the country. Surendranath Banerjea spoke these words with passion: 'The qualifications of the orator are moral rather than intellectual. It is the emotions that inspire the noblest thoughts and invest them with their colour and their distinctive character. Let no one aspire to be an orator who does not love his country, love her indeed with a true and self-absorbing love. Country first, all other things next, is the creed of the orator. Unless he has been indoctrinated in it, baptized with the holy fire of love of country, the highest intellectual gifts will not qualify him to be an orator.'

        This is not to say intellectual equipment is of no avail; his intellectual equipment, though important is subsidiary. The moral takes precedence over the intellectual dimension.